


Nom de l'amour

by calluna_cuprea



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Food Porn, Gen, M/M, awww, couplehood, schmoopy crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 09:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20673308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calluna_cuprea/pseuds/calluna_cuprea
Summary: “All right,” Crowley drawled, gesturing in a stabby motion with a teaspoon, “out with it, Angel.”Aziraphale lifted his chin another centimetre or two. “Out with what?”---------------In which Aziraphale wants something, but Crowley won't give it to him (but it's not that because this is rated G).





	Nom de l'amour

The angel had been dithering about something or other all through lunch, Crowley could tell. Aziraphale exhibited an extra level of fussiness (above and beyond his norm) when he wanted to say something but wouldn’t let himself. His lips pursed up like a Victorian schoolmarm’s, he had a bit of wiggle about the shoulders when he moved, and he made very little eye contact with anyone. He’d had the same look a few days ago on the bus when Crowley just  _ knew  _ he wanted to say something about the state of a young man’s beard to the point where Crowley could almost hear the words “fastidiousness” and “honestly” and “self-respect” rattling around his head in the angel’s prim voice.

By the time dessert arrived (there was always dessert when they went out to lunch, or dinner, or tea, or anything, really), and Crowley was leaning over his cup of black coffee with his elbows on the table, he couldn’t bear it anymore. This was something bigger than an untidy beard. Aziraphale had hardly looked at him since they sat down, and every time the angel reached for something, his shoulders, and thereby his ribs, waist, and almost hips, wriggled three or four times. “All right,” Crowley drawled, gesturing in a stabby motion with a teaspoon, “out with it, Angel.”

Aziraphale lifted his chin another centimetre or two. “Out with what?” he said, pretending to examine the drapery above the large picture windows at the front of the restaurant.

No one could see Crowley roll his eyes behind his dark sunglasses, but every other part of his body made it excessively clear that he was doing so. “Whatever it is that’s bothering you. You’ve been  _ weird  _ since we  _ got  _ here,” he said accusatorially. “No, since I picked you up. Is it my driving? You know it never does any good to fuss at me about that.” He sat back in his chair, slouched, still brandishing the spoon.

The angel cleared his throat. Here it comes, thought Crowley. “When we popped round to visit Anathema and Newt,” he began, and Crowley somehow restrained himself from another eye roll. The circuitous route, then. How unusual. 

“Yes?” the demon prompted.

“It’s so lovely to see them married. That little cottage. So cozy.” Crowley arched a dark eyebrow as if to say, Get on with it. Miraculously (no, he hadn’t really used a miracle for it; it’s a figure of speech), Aziraphale was actually looking at him in that moment. He fumbled a bit before finding his voice once more. “Well they’re very happy. And I-I-I’m… v-very happy.” He was back to scrutinizing the drapery again. Crowley watched the movement of his throat above that tartan bow tie as he swallowed. “With you.” His tongue slipped out to wet his lips.

Crowley was often struck speechless in Aziraphale’s presence. He was used to it, after six thousand years. He sometimes lost all use of his vocal chords when witnessing Aziraphale’s kindness, his sweetness, his pure and zealous love for everyone and everything. Whether he was soothing a crying baby in the arms of a frazzled mother with a subtle flick of his fingertips or uncrinkling a page in a favorite book with a quick snap; whether he listened to their waitress or bus driver or shopkeeper suddenly, strangely pour out their heart about their troubles or made the perfect cup of tea at the perfect time for someone, everything he did was always rooted in such deep, abiding love. Witnessing it made Crowley’s heart stop, made his mouth dry up, made his lungs squeeze. He didn’t know how he could get  _ used  _ to such a thing, really, but maybe it was more that… he had come to enjoy it. Expect it. And so, on a near-weekly basis, he found himself lost for words in response to some great or small act of love on Aziraphale’s part. But when that love was directed  _ at him _ ….. It was curtains for his voice. Metaphorically speaking. 

(That little flash of Aziraphale’s tongue on his lips didn’t help things.)

The only time he’d been able to overcome it, at least in recent memory, was seeing that love beaming out of Aziraphale’s every pore at that perfect table at The Ritz. Somehow--high on the end of the world that  _ hadn’t  _ happened, sitting in one of their favorite places in the world, thinking back over everything they’d done in the past few days, weeks, eleven years, half-dozen millenia--Crowley had found it in himself to overcome his usual dumbness and pour that love right back to Aziraphale with just a few words: “To the world.” And Aziraphale had said it in return, more than just a toast to their (unwitting) success at averting the apocalypse. So much more. And then he hadn’t needed to say anything for a very long time. Neither of them did.

But to hear Aziraphale say he was very happy.  _ With Crowley _ .  _ With  _ Crowley. With  _ Crowley _ ! Again, he lost the power of speech. He was thinking of a dozen different things to say, oh yes, he could always  _ think  _ of things to say! For instance, “How, how are you happy with  _ me _ , of all beings?” or “We’ve earned the right to be happy, after all we’ve been through,” or even, softly, “I’m very happy with you, too.” But none of those words made it the few inches down from his brain to come out his mouth. His lips were parted slightly, watching Aziraphale watch the curtains. Such a little thing to say, really, and Crowley was certain Aziraphale said it as naturally as his corporeal form breathed and its heart beat. 

He was happy. With Crowley.

Finally, after several extremely long seconds, Crowley made a “Mmm-hrrmmm,” noise in his throat, then picked up his coffee and took a gulp. He burned the everloving dickens out of his tongue and made a very different, higher-pitched noise in his throat, and that drew Aziraphale’s attention back to him.

“Are you all right, my dear?”

His throat now scalding, too, as he swallowed, Crowley managed a nod and gave a stifled cough. “Yeah. Good.” He had put down the spoon and now clenched his free hand on his knee beneath the table. 

Aziraphale turned his attention back to the window, his features a little softer, as if he were relieved to have got that part out. “So… so… Anathema and Newt,” he went on, once more picking up the thread of his thoughts. He gave a little sigh, a smile on his lips. “I heard Newt--I don’t know if you noticed, dear boy, you and Anathema were looking at the map and the… laid lines, or something, and she was explaining something about that pendulum…. Well, anyway. He called her ‘Annie.’ And I just thought it was the most adorable thing, having a little nickname for your, erm, for your… loved one.”

Crowley nearly swallowed his (burned) tongue then for a couple of reasons. Number one, the nickname “Annie” made him think of those horrible Star Wars movies in the late nineteen-nineties, how the character of the queen would call Darth Bloody Vader “Ani” like he was some little orphan girl in a red dress. Someone hadn’t thought that through. (Crowley took more credit for those films than he, strictly-speaking, should have; all he really did was make his way into a couple of meetings with that Lucas fellow and some editors and such and make a few suggestions, pushing them along with a subtle demonic miracle so they would stick. No, the humans fubbed those up mostly all on their own.) 

The other reason Crowley nearly swallowed his (burned) tongue was that Aziraphale had called him a ‘loved one.’ Sure, it was a bit of a jump, from “I’m very happy with you” to “loved one” meaning Crowley himself, but wasn’t that how they often talked, in leaps and jumps? Talking around things, or winding through the thickets of things, or soaring up and above things, or digging way down below things. Much easier (and, he had to be honest, more entertaining) than just saying what you meant and what you felt. 

Loved one.

Again, he had to find his voice. “Mmm?”

“Yes, and I….” Aziraphale seemed to exert great effort to turn his head and look at Crowley full-on. Crowley wished he hadn’t. He felt like a great spotlight had just been shone right in his face, like he was the proverbial deer in the proverbial (angelic, in this case) headlights. “I thought. Wouldn’t it be nice if… if we had nicknames, for each other.” 

Crowley blinked. He blinked again. (No one could see, through his dark glasses.) His mouth, he realized, was hanging open. He closed it. Like a rusty door hinge, he asked, “You……?” Tipped his head to one side. Snarled up his lips and crinkled his nose. “You dithered about,” he went on in a more usual voice, “for the last hour and a half,” eating with Aziraphale always took absolute  _ ages _ , “acting like a ninny and avoiding eye contact… because you want a cute  _ nickname _ ?” He nearly snarled the last word.

Aziraphale blinked his eyes several times in quick succession. His eyelashes, long, distractingly long, oh stars they were so long and light and fluttery and Crowley found himself physically drawn toward him, leaning again, one elbow and forearm back on the table, spellbound…. Anyway, Aziraphale blinked several times as Crowley harrumphed (mostly at himself) and sat back, arms crossed. “Yes,” Aziraphale said softly, sounding, oh G--oh Sat--oh  _ Somebody _ , sounding  _ wounded _ .

Crowley opened his mouth to give some sort of answer, but Aziraphale was once more not looking at him. His eyes lit up like fairy lights on a Christmas tree as he gazed at the window. “I’ve been thinking of a few,” said Aziraphale. Crowley flinched, hoping to… Somebody… that he wasn’t about to be hit with A.J. or Tony. He hadn’t even said them and already there was a bad taste in his mouth.

The angel went on. “I was thinking ‘Zira’ was interesting.” He was still all lit up.

Crowley grabbed the cord of the fairy lights and yanked. “Don’t like it,” he drawled, his gaze already sliding away as his hand went up for the attention of their water. “I’ll get the tab, shall I?”

***

That was the end of that discussion, or so Crowley thought. Several days later he was in the back room of the book shop. He’d lost track of what time it was, had been scrolling on his phone for hours without moving: slouched down on the sofa, elbow on the arm of it, his ankle crossed over the opposite knee, phone in his hand resting there on his knee, sunglasses discarded on a side table. He hardly even knew what he was looking at. These damned--blessed?--bloody smartphones were so hypnotic he just went through picture after picture, article after article, lists and listicles (that word  _ had  _ to be one of Hell’s, he was sure of it). When Aziraphale bustled (he did, he really did bustle, that was not just a figure of speech) in with two mugs of tea, Crowley blinked for the first time in hours, and he looked up. “You close up for the night, angel?” he asked, arching his back, chest expanding toward the ceiling as he breathed in and tipped his head back.

Aziraphale paused a few feet away and let his gaze slide from the way Crowley’s hair flopped back off his forehead, up and over the point of his nose, lingered on his lips, made its way over the sharp chin, lingered once more for a long moment on the pale, bare stretch of his throat, and then onwards to his belt buckle and long, skinny, sprawled legs. What was different now, after the not-pocalypse, was that he didn’t look away immediately, or change the subject in a higher-pitched voice than usual, or turn pink around the ears out of shame. He just looked, and enjoyed looking. 

Crowley enjoyed that he looked. He was grinning by the time he sat up, his yellow-gold eyes gleaming. Temptation accomplished, he thought. But he noticed as Aziraphale offered him one mug and sat next to him with the other that there was that little, fussy, extra wiggle in his shoulders. What now? he wondered, though with no real annoyance.

Aziraphale picked up the book he’d left with a carefully-placed bookmark last night and got out his spectacles to read. Crowley sipped his tea, looking around the room at the piles of books, stacks of books, heaps of books, dainty little lamps, crocheted blankets, pillows, pretty little framed landscapes hanging on the walls, and the million other things that made this room scream Aziraphale. The tea was perfect (of course), and occasionally when Aziraphale turned a page, his elbow would bump Crowley’s elbow. There was nowhere in time or space he would rather be.

It had been dark outside for some time when Aziraphale closed his book with a happy sigh. One of those old novels, then, thought Crowley, from the times when old folks worried that novel-reading would ruin the youths of the day, filling their heads with romance and intrigue and sin and danger and frankly all the fun stuff that made life really worth living. “Good book?” asked Crowley.

“Oh, yes,” said Aziraphale, his voice breathy. Crowley sat there beaming at him as Aziraphale hugged the book gently to his chest for a moment, then set it down on the side table, patting it once before taking off his spectacles and putting them in their case. He let his hand rest on his leg, palm up. Crowley set down his mug with its inch of cold tea in the bottom on the other side table and reached down to lace his fingers with Aziraphale’s. The clock ticked ever so faintly. They could hear the occasional car drive by out in front of the shop, but the sounds were distant. Crowley let his head settle onto the back of the sofa as he melted down into the cushions and the softness of Aziraphale’s shoulder and arm, and the side of his leg against the side of Crowley’s leg, and his eyes slowly closed, and he was warm, and……

“What about ‘Az’?” asked the angel, startling Crowley so that his head jerked up off the sofa back and he sucked in a great breath. His eyes had flown open. 

“Az?” he echoed. He wrinkled his nose. “Azzzzzzzzzz.” He narrowed his eyes. “Azzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” Aziraphale began to look rather chagrined. “You’re such an Azzzzzzzz. Shake that Azzzzzzzzzzz.”

“All right, all right, never mind,” Aziraphale said softly, his voice light like it didn’t matter, but it mattered. “I get the point.”

Crowley huffed as he shifted to once more slouch down into the cushions, his hand still in Aziraphale’s. “Azzz,” he muttered, and he closed his eyes.

***

They went to the park and fed the ducks. They went to the theater. They went to the cinema--movies, people said movies now, Crowley had to keep reminding himself. They went to lunch and tea and coffee and breakfast and dinner. They went for drives. They went a lot of places, now, and they went together rather than “clandestinely” meeting there. It still sent a giddy thrill through Crowley sometimes hold open the passenger door of the Bentley as Aziraphale climbed in, smiling (with only a little bit of fear in his eyes in anticipation of what would happen once they started driving). He loved the little flutter in his chest when they purchased tickets together before going in somewhere, hand in hand. He even endured chamber music one night because it made Aziraphale happy, and even more wonderful, Aziraphale accompanied Crowley to a rock concert. (He wore earplugs and had a sort of pained smile pasted on his face the whole time, but he stayed until the final encore and even managed a shouted “Hurrah!” at the end which was thankfully lost in the din of all the other concertgoers.)

Several days after the “Azzz Incident” or “Azzzgate” as Crowley called it to himself because he thought it was hilarious, they were walking back from dinner at a favorite little bistro just a few blocks from the bookshop. Crowley was carrying a little plastic bag, in which sat a little paper box, inside of which was a slice of chocolate cake. Aziraphale had eaten its twin after supper and then asked for another slice to go. Crowley had barely touched whatever it was he’d ordered for his meal, not really one for human food most of the time. Watching Aziraphale enjoy his own food was enough of a meal for Crowley. His little grunts and moans of pleasure sent tingles up Crowley’s spine. The way he took his time with every single mouthful, really enjoying it, not just eating to fuel his corporeal body (which didn’t need food, technically) or to pass the time, but because he simply loved food. 

After the third, “My dear boy, you simply  _ must  _ try a bite,” Crowley gave in and opened his mouth. Aziraphale inserted his own fork with a small corner of the cake on it, and Crowley bit down gently to scrape it off with his teeth, looking at Aziraphale over the top of his glasses. The fork rang out from between his teeth with a small metallic sound, and he let the sticky sweetness of the icing roll over his tongue and the moist yet crumbly texture of the cake fall apart in his mouth before swallowing. “Yeah, ‘s all right,” he conceded, and he returned to inhaling the smell of his espresso and watching Aziraphale eat.

This second slice of cake was brought into the shop and deposited on Aziraphale’s desk near the front. Crowley knew he would eat it for breakfast in the morning as he looked through the mail, probably with a cup of cocoa! It had to be a heavenly miracle that his angel was only a little soft around the middle instead of two hundred kilos, with the way he ate, and  _ what  _ he ate. Crowley dropped into the desk chair as Aziraphale went back to lock the shop door.

He came back and, just as though they hadn’t finished this conversation several days ago (Crowley thought), said, “What about ‘Phale’?” 

“Oh, bugger, this again?”

Aziraphale stopped at the edge of the desk and rested the fingers of one hand lightly on the top, looking down at Crowley. “Well, I just thought, like I said, that--”

“Angel.”

“That I thought it was so… well, cute when Newt called Anathema--”

“Angel.” A little more impatient this time.

“Called Anathema ‘Annie,’ and well, we’ve been together much longer than those children, hardly knew each other a month before they were married, and in all the time we’ve known each other, you’ve--”

“ _ Angel _ .” Crowley had pushed his sunglasses down his nose and looked up at Aziraphale with his golden eyes, one eyebrow arched, a bare hint of a smile on his thin lips. 

“What?” snapped Aziraphale, his hands in fists at his sides, a look of utter exasperation on his face. Crowley just stared up at him. 

And then Aziraphale realized, and it was like the sun coming out from behind clouds. His face softened, brightened. He tilted his head just slightly to one side with fondness. “Oh. My dear boy,” he whispered.

Crowley watched him step closer, watched him plant his palms on the arms of the desk chair. He leaned down and kissed the bridge of Crowley’s nose, above his glasses, his lips soft and warm and spreading light and love through Crowley’s whole body, from the top of his head to the tips of his wings. Crowley closed his eyes for a moment, then he reached up to take his sunglasses off entirely and set them on the desk.

“Come on, Angel,” he said, standing once Aziraphale had moved back just slightly. “Nightcap?” He took his angel’s hand and started for the back room.

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally the first fanfic I've written for probably ten years! *Confetti* I'm proud of myself.


End file.
